what's left of me
by mercywestforever
Summary: Stiles, dying, loving, learning, fighting and surviving. Told in twentytwo parts.


I normally don't write for this fandom and this is probably the most depressing Thing I've ever written so tank you for giving it a try.

**Dislaimer: Teen Wolf as well as all characters mentioned in this story belong to Jeff Davis and MTV. **

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**i.**

He thinks it starts when his mother dies. She takes part of him with her and he'll never be whole again.

He pretends that he is anyway because he has to hold his dad together and Melissa, bless her, tries to support him in the best way she can. He knows that Scott wants to hold him together but he doesn't need him because he's fine. He always is. (He never is.)

His mother dies and everything he thought he knew about life and love vanishes with her.

He will never be complete again.

**ii.**

He says that he has loved Lydia Martin, brilliant Lydia Martin who's beautiful and smarter than everyone he knows, adults included, since third grade. He has no idea what love's even supposed to feel like honestly. But when he says that he loves Lydia it makes him feel sure because sometimes it's the only thing he really knows. (Expect that he has no idea what love is.)

**iii.**

He starts running with the wolves and he tries to help, he always does but he is weak and what can some gangly boy who's only human.

**iv.**

He is not a hero but god, how much he wishes that he was because surely heroes aren't broken and empty.

**v.**

He loses so many people. Heather, Erica, Boyd... Too many people. And every time they go and join his mother on the other side they take a part of him with them until one day there's barely anything left from him. And then he dies himself.

vi.

He's fine of course he is. He came back from the dead and saved his dad. It doesn't matter that he almost died in a freaking car crash or that there's a darkness growing inside of him and he has no idea how to stop it.

He is fine like always.

**vii.**

He's really only an outer shell when the dark Japanese spirit takes control of his body. But he tries to fight it anyway not for what's left of him but for the ones he thinks he loves; his dad, Scott... Lydia. He fights and he fails and honestly... he isn't really surprised that he does. After all, how are you supposed to fight when you're barely there anymore?

**viii.**

When he says that he doesn't care about dying he means it. (Most parts of him are already dead anyway.)

**ix.**

Turns out that heroes are broken after all. Maybe they're even the most damaged of them all. He realizes that when a warrior falls to the cold ground and the world stops for a few seconds.

**x.**

Allison and Aiden... he thinks that they take even more from him than the nogitsune, maybe even more than the others that died before them because this time he's the guilty one. They wouldn't be dead without him.

He drowns in the guilt even quicker than in the ice bath.

**xi.**

(Sometimes he wishes that they just would have killed before it got this far. And sometimes sometimes is more than sometimes. )

**xii.**

They go back to normal, well normal including grieving for their friends and meaning the break between the different hells that break loose in Beacon Hills, and he wonders when they'll realize that nothing will ever be normal for them, that nothing ever was (at least not for him).

**xiii.**

Malia is easy. Malia doesn't know that there's barely anything of him left on this world. Malia has too many problems herself to see that.

Malia only sees the sides of him that he chooses to show.

That's why he starts dating her because this isn't love and they both know it. With Malia he can forget that he's drowned in the darkness because Malia doesn't know that the darkness is there.

She is easy, she is fun. When he's with her he's happy.

**xiv.**

But he should have know that he isn't allowed to be happy, at least not for long.

**xv.**

Malia turns out to be Peter's daughter and that's basically it. Of course there's way more to the story but he doesn't think that's important anymore. She's gone (not dead just gone from Beacon Hills, better for her probably) and he's left alone.

He's never really alone though, he knows that. He's got Scott, his dad, Melissa and... and he's got Lydia, just Lydia not Lydia Martin, Lydia who laughs at jokes that aren't funny and Lydia who's a completely different person from who she was before everything.

**xvi.**

Kate Argent comes back from the dead and they all secretly wish that it was her niece instead of her. They defeat the next demon, the next monster just like they always do and this time no one had to die. (It still doesn't feel like a triumph. It never will.)

**xvii.**

He realizes that Lydia is just as broken as he is and he figures that that's why it's even easier with her than with Malia.

**xviii.**

They fall together effortlessly, Lydia and him. One day she's his friend and the other she's more. Girlfriend feels like the wrong term because that's what Malia has been and Lydia is more, so much more.

**xix.**

She holds onto the parts that are still left of him. She sews them together and makes sure that they don't lose more of him.

With her he comes up for fresh air and he drags her with him.

**xx.**

There is still so much darkness left inside of him even when she's around but he realizes that with her and the others the rest of what's left of him begins to fill up with light. And she's like a beacon to him, a source of light in this immense darkness that still threatens to drown him. Without here he would be completely blind, not knowing where he was going and stumbling in the nothingness.

**xxi.**

Sometimes she still dreams of his mother and all the others but they're smiling now. They are happy and one day he'll join them Just not that soon.

**xxii.**

So yeah, there isn't that much left of him but he knows now that every fiber of his being loves Lydia because she's the one that showed him what that's, what loving is like.

(And even better, he did the same for her.)

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**So what do you think? It would be great if you could tell me what you think of this.**


End file.
